The invention relates to an apparatus on a textile machine, such as a carding machine, wool carding machine, cleaning machine or the like for recording and evaluating textile fibre material.
In a known arrangement, across the width of a textile machine there is provided a fixed opto-electronic system, for example, a camera, which scans the moving fibre material and converts the measured values into electrical signals, the system being in communication with an image-evaluating device (with computer) which evaluates the raw data of the camera.
In the case of one known apparatus (DE 36 44 535), a conveyor belt is provided, along which a layer of fibre tufts moves relative to an image-recording apparatus, for example, a television camera. In this process, an approximately square zone is observed from above by means of the camera, which takes very short-exposure images and stores them in an image bank. The sequence of images corresponds to the belt speed, in that after forward feed of a measuring zone and re-starting of an entirely new zone, the next image is produced. The camera is arranged a substantial distance from the fibre tuft layer so that at least the width of the fibre tuft layer can be recorded. The use of an individual camera, which scans the fibre material across the entire width, disadvantageously necessitates considerable installation space, particularly in respect of height, which is needed owing to the physical optical path, especially the angle, of the camera objective.
It is an aim of the invention to produce an apparatus of the kind described in the introduction that avoids or mitigates the said disadvantages, which is especially simple and space-saving and permits a lower overall height combined with at least the same image quality.